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Contact: Yvonne French (202) 707-9191

September 22, 1997

Poet W.S. Merwin Reads at Library of Congress October 15

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet W.S. Merwin will read his poems
the at 6:45 p.m. October 15 in the Montpelier Room on the 6th
floor of the James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence
Ave., S.E. Tickets are not required.

W.S. Merwin's most recent collection of poetry is The
Vixen(1996), published by Alfred A. Knopf. His other volumes of
poetry include A Mask for Janus(1952); The Drunk in the
Furnace(1960); The Lice(1967); The Carrier of Ladders (1970), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1971; The
Compass Flower(1977); Opening the Hand(1983); and The Rain in
the Trees(1988).

His translations include The Poem of the Cid(1959); The
Satires of Persius(1960); The Song of Roland(1963); Selected
Translations 1948-1968(1968), for which he won the PEN
Translation Prize for 1968; Osip Mandelstam, Selected Poems (1974, with Clarence Brown); Iphigeneia at Aulis of Euripides,
with George Dimock (1978); Vertical Poetry, a selection of
poems by Roberto Juarroz (1988); and Sun at Midnight, a
selection of poems by Muso Soseki, translated with Soiku
Shigematsu (1989).

Mr. Merwin's other awards and prizes include the Fellowship
of the Academy of American Poets, the Governor's Award for
Literature of the state of Hawaii (1987), The Tanning Prize for
mastery in the art of poetry (1993), the Lenore Marshall Poetry
Prize for Travels(1993), and a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest
Writers' Award (1994).

The work of W.S. Merwin has received wide acclaim in the
course of his career. J. D. McClatchy, wrote in The New
Yorker, "Merwin has always been a contemplative poet, drawn
to the lessons of the natural world and the rigors of unmediated
vision. He has also been a romantic poet, heroic in his quest
for the depths and intensities, the powers and possibilities of
consciousness. Best of all, he has been a surprising poet,
continually slipping the bonds of anyone's easy admiration."

The poetry and literature reading series at the Library of
Congress is the oldest in the Washington area, and one of the
oldest in the United States. This annual series of public poetry
and fiction readings, lectures, symposia, and occasional dramatic
performances began in the 1940s and has been almost exclusively
supported since 1951 by a gift from the late Gertrude Clarke
Whittall, who wanted to bring the enjoyment and appreciation of
good literature to a larger audience. The Poetry and Literature
Center, which administers the series, is also the home of the
Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, a position that has existed
since 1936, when the late philanthropist Archer M. Huntington
endowed the Chair of Poetry at the Library of Congress. Since
then, many of the nation's most eminent poets have served as
Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and, after the
passage of Public Law 99-194 in 1985, as Poet Laureate Consultant
in Poetry. The Poet Laureate suggests authors to read in the
literary series, plans other special literary events during the
reading season, and usually introduces the programs.